WCJournal

Pioneer Cemetery Project

Genealogy on the Internet is extremely addicting and recently became an Extreme Sport for me.

Getting Bobby Involved

The best way to get Bobby involved was to innocently ask him "can I use your truck to go up to the old Pioneer Cemetery back home so I can transcribe it for the Tombstone Project"?

Well, we have a lot of nuts in our family tree but Bobby is not one of them yet.

So, of course he wasn't about to let me take his truck 4-wheeling on my own.

June 2000

When we set out on this adventure we knew that the cemetery was close to the Oregon border on the old stagecoach route that we heard so much about while growing up in Siskiyou County, California.

Bobby had been to the cemetery many times over the years with various buddies while fishing and hunting but this was my first visit.

We set out very early with our camera, notebook and a general Topo map of the area, as well as a list of ideas for transcription from various sites on the Internet. We wanted to list each name and epitaph and get a photo of each headstone without disturbing the area.

As we passed Copco Lake, reminiscing about old times and enjoying the view we realized that our destination might be on the Oregon side of the border and not in California, as we had always believed.

When we arrived at the cemetery Bobby took out his GPS to check the exact location and sure enough we were barely inside the Oregon border. The reading from the center of the Cemetery is LAT42.0055N LON122.0844W (we have since seen slight variations of the lat and long on map sites) this would change my research.

I knew that no one had recorded a pioneer cemetery transcription to the project in that general area on the California side but now I was not sure if I would be doing work that was already completed by someone else. We were three hours from the computer and not in a good location to use the cell phone so we set up the camera and went to work.

Counting the graves was difficult because many of the markers appear to have been wood headstones held up with large rocks from the area. Several graves have just the large rocks and the impression in the ground left to mark them. A few were just impressions in the ground with no marker.

A few things surprised us. Two new graves and most of the graves had flowers on them. Because of this we thought it would be fairly easy to get more information. This was not to be the case.

The newest grave is for Maude Crawshaw 1895 1993. The oldest date on a headstone is for Gracie B. Way 1889. William B. Ward was born in 1829 and died in 1897. I wonder how old the others are that we can no longer read.

When we got home I went online to the Tombstone Project and still did not see anyone listed as a researcher for a cemetery in the area that we had just transcribed. ~whew~

July 2000

I contacted Ward's Klamath Funeral Home, they serviced a burial in the 1970's but they did not have any information about the cemetery so Greg Dunton gave me a few phone numbers to start with. After many calls to organizations in Oregon I was finally directed to Oregon Historic Cemeteries Association, Inc. and Jeanne Robinson. The only information that Jeanne had was the name, Way, and the location, described as eleven miles South of Highway 66 from Topsy Park near Frain Ranch. I told Jeanne that I would type a list of the names and dates of the residents at Way Cemetery and that in the meantime I would do lookups for anyone if she had inquiries.

August 2000

I was finally able to register Way Cemetery with the Tombstone Project and it was listed on Aug. 24, 2000. Jan Phillips is the Manager of the Oregon Tombstone Transcription Project.

October 2000

This month I phoned Ward's Klamath Funeral Home again to ask them to double check their records. They were kind enough to help out but had no additional information other than the location, they did suggest that I contact Mr. Varnum, a man who is associated with a Cemetery in the same general area as Way Cemetery.

The information that I got from Mr. Varnum is truly precious. He grew up in the area, on the California side and has fond memories of fishing the Klamath some 50 years before my husband fished there. He told me some old stories about various people that lived in the area; some of the surnames match the names in Way. Mr. Varnum spoke of a place called Beswick and he has vague memories of a Cemetery there.

When Bobby got home from work I asked him if he had ever heard of Beswick, it sounded familiar to me but Bobby knows a lot more about the back roads of Siskiyou County. He realized that we must have been on Beswick road. We hope to visit Mr. Varnum in the spring and look at the Pioneer Cemetery that he is working on and to lend a hand with the computer aspect of his research. I guess we should take our fishing rods and hiking boots.

November 2000

The US Geological Survey lists Way Cemetery 5km North East of Beswick, California.

We are continuing our research of Way Cemetery, Beswick and the surrounding area.

If you or anyone you know has old photos or memories of Way Cemetery please contact us.

Way Pioneer Cemetery Journal

Bobby and Patty Philps